#love how they interact with the audience

[wayward-wren]

I do find it facinating how Dracula Daily has turned Dracula into a different kind of myth now that we're in its third year running. I've seen a few people compare it to Hadestown, or a timeloop. The enjoyment isn't JUST from engaging with the story now, it's engaging with the experience, and while the emails are still the same as previous years, we've been through this before.

The way we as an audience interact with this story and this way of telling the story changes the genre. Its no longer a gothic horror, classic lit story. It's become a mythology, a tragedy, a repeating loop. Jonathan Harker returns to the castle every year. Every year it happens again. And that changes it, builds up new mythos around it, even if the words stay exactly the same.

[blackkatdraws2]

This little NPC is lost. The Narrator [Black] has come to guide her back to where she needs to be. [Blank Scripts AU]

I imagine Black would be a lot more tolerant toward his NPCs since they're basically just the Dungeons spawns, and by extension, his own creations.

[If you're familiar with manhwas / manhuas that features the dungeon / system genre, you'd be able to understand this AU a lot easier. The majority of my inspiration for worldbuilding came from those specific genres.]

[NOTE: 'Dungeon' is just another term for the Parable. Technically, Black owns a Dungeon and the Parable is just a small part of it. The Dungeon itself is much, much larger.]

For context, the comic below references this post about the Dungeon's children/guard dogs.

[They're more like the immune system since all they do is make sure the (body) is safe.]

[The reason the Narrator [Black] considers them his children is that the Dungeon is feeding off his energy and in turn shares the 'nutrients' to the monsters it produces, which transforms them into an image that resembles his power.]

And the old man below is Joseph!

Joseph is NOT AN NPC! He is a person who exists outside of the Dungeon!

[There are two separate 'worlds' for this AU. Inside the Dungeon (where most of the game-like stuff is happening) and the world outside (pretty much their normal world.)]

[There is a secret third world, and that's our world. Our reality.]

These characters are not actually important or anything, I just made them to make the AU feel more lively. To make a world that exists, you know?

When the Narrator [Black] first established himself in their world, he found a growing problem with homelessness. Not understanding human norms or why this has become a problem in the first place, he offers (tricks) them into working for him as janitors for the Dungeon and they accept for the money.

Most of them left after they got paid, but Joseph was one of the people who stayed. He doesn't have anywhere else to go and has no ambitions in life. He just wishes to live a peaceful life with food and a roof over his head.

Joseph defaults to referring to the Narrator [Black] with feminine terms due to his appearance despite his voice. The Narrator [Black] is not the type to care for such terms anyway so he doesn't care how other people refer to him as long as there's respect.

--------------

This post focuses more on the worldbuilding and background aspects of the AU! There are a lot more in store for the Blank Scripts AU, and I want to explore more on how the characters might interact with their surroundings and how this would work to make a world that makes sense.

It would be so cool if people made self-inserts or OCs for my AU actually. I'd love to see how you guys would work with my stuff. Play around with it like a barbie world for your little barbie dolls. Be canon compliant, be canon divergent, who cares, have fun.

[ahappydnp]

being a full adult during ii was so funny

like just sat there while dan and phil worked it out in the remix with the 14 year olds who were yelling at them to kiss

[alchemicaladarna]

I want to talk about the camera work and cinematography during today's stream, and give that some appreciation because the deliberate shots we get of Dapper, Pomme, and the landscapes too, were just CINEMA.

We know BBH is very intentional with his camera povs, like the F5's and such, but in this stream, he not only showed us Pomme and Dapper as the main characters and managed to capture their own experiences, but also roleplayed the Ghosties' reactions, as if we the audience, are actually characters in this universe, leading to some very much needed lighthearted moments of Bad nodding or shaking the camera at certain comments and conversations, like how the audience would react. Or some of the more heavier moments, such as Dapper and Pomme suggesting working with the soul vultures again and the ghosties shaking their heads rapidly while the chat says "NOOOOO" because that's how the camera would convey the dread the audience felt at the implications of the conversation.

...And then, conveying the sadder parts of Bad rping as his own ghost, watching Dapper and Pomme, yet unable to comfort or hold them because he physically can't. Just shatters my heart.

Of course, there were times when he goofs, like I'm not saying this whole stream and every shot was perfect, because that'd be ridiculous. And also, there's so much you can do when you're only spectating as a player, and not really given the CREATIVE MODE FLIGHTY POWERS to get a clear view of everything, but with what he had to work with, I'd say BBH did a pretty phenomenal job today!

At this point, I barely even know what I'm saying, but it makes me go crazy when players get creative with camera angles and play around with the cinematography of their streams just to give the audiences the best cinematic and immersive experience, and just finding new ways to rp in block game, which is already pretty difficult to begin with.

[scarlet-cookie]

I feel like out of all the layers of secrets and concealment Klein hides, the people that would probably be shocked the most if those secrets ever comes to light would be the Moretti siblings.

Imagine you have a brother. Brother was going to go find a typical 9-5 job, but then he suddenly “finds a better job” and boom all your livelihoods improve ‘cause of his earnings. He also starts to cook really well, but you chalk it down to him learning from his friend’s chef. Then one day, he dies on duty. You mourn for him and miss him desperately. You move to a bigger city and occasionally feel like he’s still around, but all you ever see are the new names popping up in the newspaper, such as Gehrman Sparrow, while you focus and continue on your life.

Then, somehow, years into the future, you find out he’s not dead. His grave is literally empty. Not only that, he’s also the great detective of the capital of your literal country, the crazy adventurer feared by pirates, the tycoon who was generous but mysterious and reserved, and a wandering magician granting wishes. Also, he’s a GOD. GOD. OF. A. LITERAL. CHURCH. Then you find out that HE’S NOT EVEN YOUR BROTHER. The brother you grew up with is long dead. It’s a stranger who has been and assimilated into his body and mind since the day your brother died. Oh yeah, that friend he said was the reason he’s a good cook? That friend has been dead even before your “brother”. And you swore you knew him well. He was a history student trying to get a good job for the future. What in the Evernight Goddess’ divine kingdom happened? Oh, yeah, speaking of Evernight, your “brother” is “Her” blessed. By the way, he still hasn’t gone to the theatre with you like he promised.

I don’t know how Melissa managed to find out The Fool = Klein (maybe some angel told her in a dream or Klein directly told her idk) but I can’t even comprehend how she managed to process that information. Like imagine waking up one day and finding out a close relative of yours presumed dead is now a deity. It’s definitely not an average Tuesday afternoon thing.

[burst-of-iridescent]

people who say zutara can't be canon because "they only became friends in the last five episodes!" irritate me so much like my dude are we watching the same show? zuko and katara’s arcs mirror each other from book 1, they share parallel after parallel and have layers upon layers of symbolism, their backgrounds and personalities and morals are so similar that we the audience can see how compatible they are and how well they would understand each other even without explicit interaction between them, so that by the time the southern raiders rolls around, it simply serves as proof of what we already know about zutara.

tsr, eip and sozin's comet are, narratively speaking, the culmination of zuko and katara’s arc together, not the beginning! they're the fruit that’s borne from the seeds that were sowed since the very first season, and naturally viewers would pick up on that! of course people who love these two characters would see the connection between them and the similarities they share and the thematic significance of their relationship, and then the show itself validates this audience interpretation in the catacombs, in tsr, in the finale! that’s what zk shippers mean when we say that zuko and katara were meant to be together, because their relationship is threaded so deeply into their own personal narratives and that of the show overall that they don’t even need a lot of screentime together for the audience to know that a) they would be a good couple and b) the direction of the story was naturally leading to a romance between them.

zuko and katara’s relationship extends above and beyond their moments of direct interaction, so that their scenes together after they become friends are really just the payoff for the buildup of the past three seasons - because the narrative foundation for zutara was laid all the way back in book 1, not in the southern raiders or any of the episodes that followed.

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

i stand with you in the face of a defensive misunderstanding of what critique is.

i think understanding what a critique actually is is a skill that increasingly is not taught. i remember going through freshman art courses feeling the frustration that all negative, nasty, unhelpful, and missed-the-point-entirely feedback is so commonly conflated with critique, and then critique gets a bad name because everyone remembers the time someone said their painting looked like an asshole (true story, altho now i think i would take it as a compliment) instead of the time a teacher or friend or classmate helped them uncover a hurtful bias or think of new ways to explore the same idea or how to connect it to related ideas or how to look up and understand other people's ideas on the same topic.

anyway i think you're great.

ahhh you're so kind to me!! i appreciate your support, and i think you are great also.

i have experience with giving and receiving critique as a student myself, and i think it was the best part of my degree! i majored in creative writing in college, and critique was just a generally accepted part of learning to become a writer. i don't even remember people being especially worried about receiving critique on their work. we had guidance on what kind of feedback was useful, but we were still at liberty to give it as we saw fit as like messy 19 year olds. the standard was that we gave it both written on printed copies of the work AND aloud in front of the whole class, and the writer receiving it was not permitted to speak during the critique. understanding how people are perceiving your work is important!

i don't have any particularly negative recollections of the critique process, although once in a high school writing class, the boys in the class told me that my male characters touched each other too gently and real boys are more rough with each other. in particular, they took issue with me writing that one boy nudged another. nudging is too soft. nudging is for girls. that was more than 20 years ago, and i still think about it sometimes because it was such an interesting perspective! i did not take their advice, though.

i should dig up that piece and see if it reads queer in any other ways. i think that's what they were getting at. (actually i once had a non-fiction class tell me i was in love with my roommate after reading an essay i wrote about her)(i did not listen to that advice either, but having 12 acquaintances tell you that you're gay in 2006 before you realize it yourself is Truly Something!)

i think people have conflated criticism and critique and think that being more openly analytical is the same thing as being negative. but analysis is so fun to me! analysis is why i joined fandom in the first place, and it's why i write fic! can we trust each other to be respectful and to speak in good faith even when we're not singing each other's praises? for me fandom would be better if we could.

oh i also want to clarify that i don't think it's impossible to demonstrate that you've thought deeply about a piece of fanwork while remaining completely positive. people do it all the time and do it very well!

i know i sometimes have tunnel vision wrt my own perspective. in a lot of situations, i wish it were more acceptable to be more direct, and i know people sometimes find the way i express myself to be kind of shocking. i know a lot of people like to be spoken to more indirectly than comes natural to me, and i don't mean to imply that my perspective is the only correct one or that there's no good reason to err on the side of gentleness/politeness in our responses to amateur art and writing. i just think that at a certain level of circumspection, it feels like we're all holding each other at arm's length.

i think for people who can't bear to feel exposed, making and sharing art is always going to be painful and difficult, and maybe too painful and difficult to enjoy the process unless they're sure of a soft landing. but like. the rewards of being loved only come after the mortifying ordeal of being known, right?

[xxcherrycherixx]

Can we talk about how disappointing both the other raptor handlers are compared to the handler in chaos theory?

Like owen and soyona are nowhere near as powerful as her when it comes to the control of the raptors. Owen's ones literally tried to kill him and the special one who is meant to care about him still tries to fucking kill him occasionally! (I mean understandable, chris pratt has a very killable face)

Soyona is meant to be all about breeding them to be loyal- yet the atrociraptors have to use lasers and audio to attack? What? they likely dont even like her- we never see her interact with them, shes always far away from them which makes me believe she has barely any control of them- she has to use recorded raptor calls to even call them, they arent coming to her, theyre coming to what they think is another raptor.

Now the handler- that woman is everything those two wish they were. The only character in the entire franchise to have an actual bond with a carnivore. Actually, not just one carnivore- but atleast THREE of the fuckers. To make it even funnier- its the exact same group of atrociraptors that soyona fails to have any sort of bond with! The atrociraptors have no need for recorded raptor sounds or lasers- they follow simple whistle command, and not evwn just commands for attack, no they also respond to commands to retreat and follow.

But guess what, it gets crazier. Because not only do they follow commands- they are shown to actually like their handler. They arent just following commands because they hve been trianed to like with owen and soyona, they follow the commands because they actively see the handler as their leader and part of the family. They alert her to things, they surround her protectively from threats, they show fucking actual affection to her. They will let her pet them and hold their faces, allow her to rub her face against their own- scratch that they enjoy when she presses her face against theirs and even cuddles into the touch!

basically, how the fuck am i meant to think of owen or soyona as great raptor trainers, when theres a woman who actually has full control over her raptors? How am i meant to find soyona an intimidating villain when theres another woman who does a much better job than her at using the atrociraptors as loyal hunting dogs?

[the-voldsoy]

Ethics Town: Ship's Theseus thoughts<3:

the title is making me so excited I love the ship of Theseus

DAVID AULTTTT

holy fuck brain transplants ?? I love fictional unethical science experiments<33

diversity win! the man about to commit medical atrocities is gay! 🏳️‍🌈

HE KNOWS ??? whaugh ??? ? ???? ?????

oh God.

[samarecharm]

Random question about the “they should make persona for people who like good games” post. Do people think the persona series is that bad? I know they aren’t perfect but I wouldn’t call them bad games.

I had a wholeass essay written out before i realized im too tired to make it sound coherent. AND my only experience is p 4 and 5, so my opinion on it means jack shit. All i can say is that the most recent titles suffer from bad writing. (And repetitive gameplay, but thats a different issue). Be it poorly written characters and dialogue, or poorly written interactions and plot, it is hard to take some of the stuff in the more recent games at face value. One could argue that that just means the game is subpar, not necessarily bad, but thats subjective; bad means different things to different people. And i say this as someone who thinks this game is Not the best but still found it incredibly engaging and entertaining.

[malinaa]

the thing about doctor/river that i don’t ship is that i just think river suffers from having her entire character so intrinsically tied to the doctor that she lacks any real depth because we never spend enough time to see her outside of Sexy Girlboss!

[caswlw]

the idea that they’re writing the season as they go so they’re seeing the reaction the audience has and that it (even in the smallest way possible) could have an impact on what happens this season (and in future seasons) is so wild to me. not saying that they’re seeing our response and saying “oh that sounds good, totally writing that in,” but it’s not impossible to say that they will see what the people want, realize the best way to generate buzz and excitement and increased viewership is to keep your fans happy, and then actually do something about it instead of killing characters/storylines just for kicks

911 has the opportunity to be that bitch even more than it already is and they shouldn’t squander it while they’re on top

[nilesmoon]

infinite wealth if sawashiro said "who gives a shit about ebina im going to hawaii with ichi" and then the rest of the game is a family vacation

[lunarharp]

was bored, realised i care more about orufrey than anyone ever, then decided to work out my top 5 otps of all time and give them awards

(below) then i got drunk on power and judged them on even more categories... canon rating.. colour-coded rating (??) .. and the mysterious.. Fated Rating.

orufrey

-canon rating: 4/5

romantic narrative that can be reasonably assumed at this point to be “going somewhere” while technically ““not canon”“. i know what she is doing

-colour-coded: 6/5

no words. designed in perfect and homosexual complements. black & white = yin & yang. black hair white shirt black skirt. white hair black shirt white skirt. also they’re fire & water.. elemental coded. qif’s glasses are black & white too... everything about them represents them as a pair. and they both have gold & blue highlights. what is it going to be, white & black tuxes at the wedding or do witches get married in gowns. just skip to that chapter it’s fine

-fated rating: 5/5

The. Tassels. they chose to live together and entwine their lives around each other. it means MORE that it was choice and not fate. nuff said............... p.s. read my fic

ferdibert

-canon rating: 4/5

they can be implied to get married or they can kill each other depending on YOUR choices. 4 points for the chaos of that. would be 5/5 if the pair ending text wasn’t translated in a homophobic way

-colour-coded: 3/5

orange and black. looks good together so points for that. also those colours mean ferdibert forever to me i don’t care about halloween.

-fated rating: 2/5

they used to hate each other. and with slightly different happenstances in life they end up killing each other (with pathos). but that stuff means something in its own way so it’s fine they’re fine.

suipo

-canon rating: 5/5

they basically end up together and kiss at the ending 💗

-colour-coded: 4.5/5

blue & pink. perfect. beautiful. and they match as perfect complements in other ways too. both are named after sweets. suipo 4ever

-fated rating: 4/5

they just met randomly. BUT... they had to meet... they both needed to meet each other to advance their personal narratives. <3 +2 points for dying and ending up in heaven together cause that’s bonkers

wrightworth

-canon rating: 2/5

NOT CANON.....I GUESS.......i literally forget this though. designed by a BL creator or something and a stupidly gay narrative for Friends so how could you say 0/5 though

-colour-coded: 5/5

another pink & blue. or red & blue more broadly. incredible. great. they match in tons of ways. like the wedding rings that capcom made.

-fated rating: 6/5

childhood friends to whatever they are is worth 3/5 in and of itself, but then so many of their choices are literally about each other in such incredibly pathetically gay ways that it’s truly nuts.

joker/akechi

-canon rating: 2.5/5

i don’t know what to say. the narrative and the heartcrushing 7 minute romantic ending song that haunts my waking moments even now are what they are. i don’t know what to say

-colour-coded: 3/5

well... their colours are both black & red... ? kind of? you could say black/red & black/white. i don’t know. it looks good though.

-fated rating: 4/5

(literally loads of spoilers................... !!!!!!!!) they were quite entirely given their powers on purpose to foil each other. but, akechi wants to be free of narratives and doesn’t want to be entwined with anyone else’s life. next time this’ll be his choice. THAT MAKES IT EVEN MORE....WHAT IT IS. also they’re just obsessed with each other and their songs are about each other and no more what ifs, what matters is how you bring joy to life when i said a false happiness would be enough you softly covered my mouth etc etc etc

orufrey: 15

suipo: 13.5

ferbies: 9

wrightworth: 13

j&a: 9.5

WHY ARE FERBIES LAST???? hubert is going to kill me.....that's ok. the fact that i learnt to draw with you means the world <3

P.S. I LOVE BYLITZA!!!!!! from fe3h. but ones like that are so personal that there's no point saying "i love this" like i love the same thing others love. or something

ok bye

[keepthetension]

been wondering this for ages but i kept forgetting to actually ask:

[fizzseed]

assorted thoughts on ep 134, written as i listen. im so unwell about this show rn

martin having to correct himself from archival assistant :(((

ADELARD DEKKER???

wait wait wait WAIT! A FIFTEEENTH??????? A FIF TEENTH?

the extinction is TERRIFYING. nuclear winter.

so interested in what gertrude had to say about this considering jon was never taught about it. and then why is peter lukas so intent on teaching martin about it????

The Mother of Puppets is a SICK ASS name for a ritual holy shit?? Terminus too but the Web is so sketchy lmao

but WHY wouldn’t the eye want to stop the extinction??? or is peter lucas just so intent on it?? and how would the avatar of the eye be a participant in stopping it

and martin coming to peter lukas after the flesh attacked?????? WHY specifically

”Like a grubby jesus” show has comedic chops too i love it when they just bust out a hilarious line

MARTIN was stacking tape recorders on the coffin????? i thought they just appeared,, holy shit. okay.

”we’re you compel” peter not being able to comprend that martin did it of his own free will because he CARES. or he knows that martin cares and it’s his goal to STOP that.

he’s for SURE worried about jon, even though he says he isn’t, and knowing if jon could compel martin EVEN THROUGH the influence of the buried would be incredibly important to know. he’s working WITH the eye, but i don’t know if i trust The Lonely to work with anyone for any extended period of time.